


visions of gideon

by americananirvana



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Smoking, Smut, Tumblr, Tysh, Violence, josh dun x tyler joseph, joshler - Freeform, skater josh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 09:29:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16658558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americananirvana/pseuds/americananirvana
Summary: “be careful, baby. you do this wrong and you light your pretty head of curls up. that’d make your mom real sad, wouldn’t it?”or in which josh smokes too many cigarettes and tyler has a tumblr account.





	visions of gideon

**Author's Note:**

> hey. its been a while.  
> i hope you’re doing okay.
> 
> ive been working on this for a while and i wanna get what i have out there  
> please let me know if i should continue this

josh is thirteen, and he’s getting out of the front seat at lucky’s and walking, hands shoved into pockets, next to his mom.

his mom angrily taps between his shoulders, “straighten up, you don’t look good hunched over.”

he scream whispers under his breath, curls up, balls up his fists and his footsteps grow heavier.

but he straightens his fucking back.

 

his vans are already scuffed after two days of skating, and he absentmindedly rubs a fresh scab on his elbow. his finger comes away wet.

josh wipes his finger on his jeans and walks down the cereal aisle. his mom says they’re out of milk too.

there’s a woman with a pomeranian in her cart. josh smiles at her, a curve of dry lips, and she smiles back with what josh calls The Smile.

it’s a weak curve, no teeth, polite. it disappears the moment his eyes drop from her face.

he smiles at the pomeranian and it smiles back.

her flip flops slap on the ground and she rustles when she walks past him.

 

he bends down to get family sized froot loops off the shelf, and his elbow stings when he picks it up. he thinks there's warmth running down his forearm, and he wipes at it, but his hand comes away clean.

he hears the rattling of a shopping cart and the familiar jingle of the bells his mom attached to her keys, so she could shake her bag to find them. she’s already gotten the milk, so he tosses the box in the cart. 

they always do self checkout. he grabs a pack of gum off the shelf without asking and scans out. his mom doesn’t protest. 

the guy standing at the checkout station next to them is wearing shorts. he has a prosthetic leg, black and sleek, and josh stares at it, hands passing the froot loops through the scanner.

his phone vibrates in his back pocket, and he raises his eyes, and smiles at the man.

he smiles back, and it's not The Smile.

he smiles at the german shepherd with a support dog vest on, and the dog smiles solemnly back.

 

josh’s right leg starts aching when he shuts the car door, and no amount of awkward stretching will make it go away. josh checks his phone, and he thinks about math homework.

 

josh is still 13 when he smokes his first three cigarettes. the pack has chinese lettering and what looks like a temple on the front, probably picked up from ranch 99 where his mom says they need to connect with their asian roots.

 

the first one is with shaky hands in the backyard, in socks, avoiding the dog shit scattered on the ground (because everyone is too lazy to take the dog on a walk, and everyone is too lazy to pick up the shit that’s stacking in the backyard), heart pounding out of his chest.

his dad’s lighter has the giants logo on it, and he doesn’t pause before his thumb is scratching, pressing down and flicking the flame to life. he’s gasping, and he drags from the cigarette in two second intervals. (he’s too quick, but he doesn’t cough.) he stubs it on the ground after half a minute.

he brushes his teeth for too long afterwards, and he won’t stop sniffing his shirt for hours afterwards, paranoid, paranoid, paranoid.

 

the second time is behind a cluster of trees in a public park, with a friend.

“here?”

“uh, yeah. i don’t think anyone can see us from here.”

they huddle down, sitting on their skateboards, leaves crunching.

it doesn’t stay lit the first time.

“don’t you have to like.. suck in while lighting it?”

josh tries it again, and it goes better for him this time. long drags, and his friend looks at him in awe while his smoke curls up into the tree branches.

josh passes the cigarette, and he suddenly he feels anxiety kickstart in his chest, that low thrum that’s so fucking familiar.

his friend has asthma, and the cigarette is barely a quarter burned through when he starts coughing, so josh shoves it against a wall and they go to josh’s house and rub scented lotion all over their arms.

 

the third time's with his own lighter, and untouched cigarettes found on the side of the road. they’re slightly brown and damp, and josh crushes one of them just to test it and it scatters everywhere.

josh smokes, and burns through all three of the disgusting fucking things, yellow stains on his middle and index finger. his room smells disgusting and he sprays the entire place with febreze afterwards. if his mom notices anything, she doesn’t comment.

his friends yell at him in a group chat, but his lighter is half clear, half opaque, and josh likes the red light it casts.

he tucks one leg beneath him, and he ignores the ache, the twitching in his leg.

 

josh is seventeen and his best friend has a baseball bat, and josh cradles the bat for the entire time he's over at his friends house.

he relishes the wood in his hands, the nearly imperceptible film of excitement that taints his vision, that odd feeling of destruction that so often reigns in 17 year old punks.

josh is a fucking hurricane, and he knows it, he knows it, he knows it.

josh knows he's a hurricane in the way cigarette ash sticks to the soles of his shoes, the way his knuckles turn red and pain fizzles under his skin, the sound his skateboard makes when he slides it down a rail.

josh knows he's a cliche too, but it's okay, josh knows hurricanes have names for a reason.

josh buys a bat from the thrift store for seven dollars.

 

josh is seventeen when he crawls out the window of his room in typical oversized hoodie and ripped jeans, sporting eye bags and a bleeding lip.

josh is seventeen when he shoves his skateboard under the bush in front of that breathing house, the house with a rap verse heartbeat and no eyes.

josh is seventeen when a boy smells the smoke on his hoodie, and he gives josh The Smile. he drives josh into the mattress with a hand on the back of his neck and another on his right thigh, and josh struggles to breathe as his face is stuffed into cold blankets and he can't see anything. the boy leaves bleeding scrapes on his thigh and josh feels filthy, josh wants the scrapes to fucking heal.

but hurricanes are still hurricanes whether they're filthy or not, and josh takes his thrift store bat to a pair of kneecaps the next day.

the next day his teacher talks aboutromeo and juliet, talks about secret lovers. josh flicks the pride pin on his backpack and ms. penaski tells them about the word paramour, secret lover.

josh smokes and carves a p into the bottom of his bat.

 

tyler's middle school art teacher talked about color theory, about how red is powerful, about how mcdonald's used red because they wanted people to get in and get out as fast as possible.

tyler decides red is a temporary color, something that you catch glimpses of, the color of gas stations on long road trips and marker on dollar bills.

his art teacher talked about how mcdonald's changed their colour scheme to brown and tan and yellow, because they want you to stay, stay forever.

tyler wore an rabbit mask everywhere when he was 5. he liked that no one could tell who he was, no one could see his face, and he'd giggle and scream and cry and nobody could blame him for it, because there was nobody to blame. then he sees a boy with a wolf mask on halloween, and tyler is no longer a rabbit.

tyler does not consider himself human.

tyler is a fizzing school soda of paranoia, and he makes a tumblr account with the url "lizz-91", and tyler sits in a mcdonalds, lets the tan tame his mind, and messages every person who tags a post with "mcdonalds" with a "Hello", capital h, something never used with friends.

tyler keeps links to porn sites and their viruses in the notes of his phone, and waits for messages back.

tyler is 18 and his mask is a pornbot.

 

josh gets caught two weeks before his 18th birthday.

hes slumped on the old couch in the garage. the tips of his fingers are tucked under the waistband of his sweatpants, and he's staring absentmindedly at the wall, scratching, thinking.

his mom opens the door and he weakly shoves the cig into the crack in the sofa, but she can smell it.

"josh, out of all things, cigarettes? why not weed?" she coughs and waves a hand around her face.

josh's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.

his mom opens the window in the garage.

"and you dont even have the sense to smoke malboros. camels, really?"

josh shrugs. his hand goes into his pocket to grab his lighter.

she grabs his shoulder and says, threatening in his ear, "one pack per month. and if jordan ever sees you, you're gone, you understand?"

josh slumps down, shrugs her hand off and mutters a yeah.

josh dreams about dying of lung cancer that night.

 

josh made his tumblr when he was thirteen, in a deep depressive episode during the witching hour.

he started with 2 followers, both of which were pornbots.

he sadposted to both of them.

he has over 3,000 now, probably because he's hot and posts selfies with a cig in his mouth and sends dick pics to whoever asks. he wonders if those two pornbots still follow him. 

josh is outside mcdonalds, skateboard under his foot. he pops it up and tucks it under his arm, avoiding the bleeding scrapes on the palm of his hand.

 

tyler drops the mask sometimes.

sometimes people respond and they're talking about killing themselves, and tyler removes the capital H from his hello and talks them down the best he can.

sometimes people respond and they're naive, and they think he's a real person and they consider clicking his links and tyler tells them to stay off of tumblr and be safe and then he blocks them.

sometimes people respond with something funny, and tyler makes a friend. tyler has a lot of friends.

sometimes people respond and they're horny, so tyler gives them what they need and sends everyone the same picture of his dick.

 

nobody at school thinks tyler is weird. everyone's eyes are sympathetic when tyler tells them he hates being at home. people visit him at mcdonalds often, and sometimes tyler leaves with them, and comes back to mcdonalds with a hickey on his neck.

it’s okay.

it’s not weird.

 

it’s okay if a boy with a beat up skateboard and dark circles says no.

tyler asks him to go home with him and he says no.

“who the fuck picks people up in a mcdonalds?” and he fills a water cup with coke and leaves.

 

tyler licks the blood off his lip and logs onto tumblr.

 

josh skates home, trying to light his cigarette and unlock his phone at the same time. he ollies up a curb before a mom in a fucking subaru can hit him. 

she honks and speeds past.

he gives her The Smile, twisted edges and bared teeth, smoke pouring out in the gaps.

 

scumfuck777:

some guy just tried to pick me up in a mcdonalds. he was cute but i just wanted some fucking coke

 

he thinks about it, staring at the notifs coming up at the bottom of his cracked screen. he reblogs it and adds,

 

scumfuck777:

course it was in a water cup. would someone with the url scumfuck777 pay for a coke

he tags it as mcdonalds, and maybe in a strange way, he suspected what was going to happen next.

he tucks his phone securely in his back pocket and flicks his cigarette butt into a gutter. he skates the rest of the way home.

he can be a good american boy.

he can be a good boy.

 

16 messages in his inbox too many.

 

let me suck your dick.

 

fuck me, daddy

 

More Images Here, Come watch my show

 

_Hello_

 

a message from lizz-91.

 

he snorts.

 

scumfuck777:

whats up dude

 

lizz-91 responds instantly.

 

lizz-91:

I’m great! The weather is fantastic and I’ve really just been waiting to relax all day, if you know what I mean ;) How about you?

josh snorts again. he doesn’t need a vent blog when he can just talk to pornbots.

 

scumfuck777:

im decomposing

 

“liz” takes a moment to collect her thoughts.

 

lizz-91:

dude same

 

josh, struck by this turn of events, stares at his phone with furrowed eyebrows.

 

scumfuck777:

wait what the fuck

What The Fuck

 

lizz-91:

you’re too relatable not to break the facade for

also i’m pretty sure i saw you in a mcdonalds today and you’re hot as fuck

 

scumfuck777:

so what? you get off on hooking up with people you see in mcdonalds and pretending to be a pornbot on tumblr?

 

lizz-91:

you could see it that way

 

scumfuck777:

yr a bit sick but i kinda like u

not to be gay but you’re hot too. the shaved head and hooded eyes is a look

i might’ve gone home with you if you didn’t try to pick me up in a fuckin mcdonalds

 

lizz-91:

ill be sure 2 take note of that, babe

 

tyler does take note of that.

he meets josh in a taco bell parking lot. not on purpose.

josh is putting someone in a chokehold and making them light his cigarette with their shaking, blue hand.

“be careful, baby.” he croons to the body in the tight embrace of his arms. “you do this wrong and you light your pretty head of curls up. that’d make your mom real sad, wouldn’t it?”

tyler hears the flick of the lighter and sees josh cradle the person’s chin and shotgun smoke into their mouth.

the plastic lighter clatters to the floor as they pass out. smoke escapes their nostrils as josh drops their body, like a wisp of their soul reaching for god.

“i’ll pretend like i didn’t see that, even if it was the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen.” tyler’s voice is dry enough to mop up the tears of an angel.

josh collapses against the wall, taking a drag contemplatively. he grins as he lets the smoke drift out of his mouth.

 

“sicko.”

 

“coming from you?” tyler raises an eyebrow. he sits down on the gritty concrete, a decent distance away from the body knocked out cold.

the redhead laughs, and tyler entertains the thought that josh, oversized hoodie and cigarettes, bleeding knuckles and glazed eyes, is the perfect image of the american teenage boy.

 

“point taken. wanna meet the love of my life?”

 

“absolutely.”

 

"her name is para," he croons.

"par-uh. she hates it when people pronounce her name wrong."

the bat smacks loudly against his palm.

tyler isn’t sure whether to undo his belt there or run straight into his mom’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading. let me know what you thought, if i should write more, and if you believe in god
> 
> talk to me:  
> tumblr: @washedouteyes


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